How football raises the game for girls in villages of Kanniyakumari district

After Sunday Mass, a little after the noon sun peaks at Thoothoor, seven girls, in the age group of 13 to 17, make their way to one of the small beaches that stud the Kanniyakumari coast. Minutes after they step on the sand, they see young boys kicking a football around. Their net is hastily thrown together with some stumps of wood and a makeshift fishing net. The girls gain control over the ball. “Nidhi is our striker. She is a great shot. Just watch,” says M. Sasha, her teammate, who belongs to Thoothoor’s Netaji Sports Academy.

Nidhi stylishly kicks the ball across the fishing net, looking to her coach John Britto, president of Nethaji Library and Sports Club, for approval. They give the football back to the boys and gather by the waves. Over the next half-an-hour, they discuss potential careers in football, the gains they have made since they first began training a year ago, and their love for the sea.

Nidhi and her six other friends are among the first batch of young women footballers who are looking to revive the sport in their villages since the 1970s. Villages like Chinnathurai, EP Thurai and Neerodi along the same belt have also now begun steadily contributing players to local school and college teams, playing exhibition matches and small non-competitive tournaments called ‘friendlies’. Though these villages along the west Kanniyakumari coast have seen many successful women footballers in the past, the tradition, they say, died in the early 1980s with the closure of the KRYC Football Club, the first football club of Thoothoor. An attempt to bring football back to the lives of women in Thoothoor since 2022 has made all the difference.

No mean feat 

And if you wondered from where they imbibed this extraordinary love for football, they are not far from Kerala where football is elevated to the foremost pantheon. Thoothoor and seven adjacent hamlets along the coast — Erayumanthurai, Poothurai, Chinnathurai, Eraviputhenthurai (EP Thurai), Vallavilai, Marthandanthurai, and Neerodi — are only minutes from Kerala. Nearly everyone in the village has probably played some football at some point in life.

Besides deep-sea fishing, these villages have been popular in the football circuit for providing quality players to the Tamil Nadu Santosh Trophy team and popular leagues, including the Indian Super League (ISL) and the I-League. In the past two years, several local league teams have come to the village, scouting for talent. The village had a thriving women’s football team called the KRYC Women’s Football Team in the 1970s which often competed with teams in Kerala. However, it fizzled out with time as interest and competition waned. W. Joobo Mary, a 62-year-old retired teacher from Thoothoor, who was one of the members of the KRYC women’s team in 1974, says they often trained in the beach sand as proper grounds were not available.

They began training as early as 5 a.m. before heading to school, played against the boys team and often took part in ticketed ‘nines’ tournaments against their contemporaries from nearby villages in Kerala. Although it is popularly believed that the craze for football in the seven villages came from the neighbouring State, residents of Thoothoor and its nearby villages say they are unsure about when exactly football entered their lives. “Everyone has kicked a football around for as long as the oldest person here can remember. The idea of a women’s team was not a genius move. It simply came from the question ‘why not?’,” says coach Britto.

Girls to the fore again

J. Hethersha, a student of Class 12, who is part of the academy in Thoothoor, says that after about 50 years, they are the first among the women of the village to begin kicking a football again. The routine that the women of the 1970s followed continues to be emulated. “The pandemic was especially tough for young women in the village as they were confined to their homes. The men ended up playing on the streets and going fishing but the young women had no respite. That is when we saw some women organically playing football on the streets. When we decided to offer them coaching, at least 20 people signed up. Now, between 12 and 15 people come in for practice,” says coach Britto.

With just one year of training, a number of students from the academy have taken part in zonal and district-level selections. They have taken part in local ‘sevens’ tournaments as well as exhibition matches. Three students are part of their local school team at Pius XI Higher Secondary School and more are training to be part of it.

Hethersha, who is keen on clearing her National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test next year, says she had no idea how to dribble a ball. Now, she has put in all her extra time into perfecting and practising the sport. All the girls wake up at 5 a.m., head for runs along the beach and then practise for three hours.

“Since the headmistresses at our schools know about our practice schedules, we go half-an-hour late to school,” she says. Her grades have not suffered even once because she plays, she adds, as she is the top rank holder.

“In a way, besides having learnt the sport in a year, I’m far more confident than I ever was. I was scared to talk to people and to be myself. I am now more vocal. That is refreshing,” she says. This sentiment is echoed by Ms. Mary who says that every villager would encourage the girls to run faster and kick harder. “Our perspective of life and our confidence levels have changed,” she says. She hopes the young girls onin also end up taking away the same feeling.

M. Sasha whose cousin Reagan Albarnas has captained Tamil Nadu’s Santosh Trophy team, says she has been haunted by the loss her school team suffered when she was in the team in Class 8. Now a Class 10 student with some degree of practice, Sasha says she plans to represent India in international tournaments. “It has become an obsession. It is no longer just a goal. This is especially because it feels like football is in my blood,” she says.

S. Athira from Marthandanthurai who has been playing for the local college team at St. Jude’s College since 2020 says that village clubs and academies focusing on honing the talent of young women is the need of the hour. “When they play at the college level, they will be able to command respect from other teams across the border. They will also be able to play more matches. I, for instance, only began playing in college. Although I have enjoyed my time and have improved my skills, I can see the advantage that these young women have over me,” she says.

Since Thoothoor is located 30 km from the district headquarters in Nagercoil and at least 10 hours away from the State capital Chennai, residents often talk about how their villages are ignored. Despite having produced several successful footballers, Thoothoor struggles to have government-sanctioned grass turfs and floodlights for their grounds. This proves to be an impediment while practising in the evenings, Mr. Britto says.

Sam Michael. K, Physical Director, St. Jude’s College, says local talent from villages like Chinnathurai, EP Thurai and Thoothoor can learn to play better with more tournaments exclusively designed for women with attractive prizes. This will help the sport get more participants.

The women from here say they are not hampered by rules that might make other women in the State uncomfortable with the game. For instance, the girls say they are not particularly bothered about staying up late for a practice session. Nidhi, the main striker at Netaji Academy, says her father, a driver, has always encouraged her to play the sport. “My father would see me playing with a bunch of my older brothers and correct some of my mistakes. He has repeatedly told me that I’m talented and I must pursue a career in the sport. My folks do not mind my staying out late or leaving early,” she says.

Sasha says that though she was mildly uncomfortable wearing shorts when they first began wearing them for football, she grew used to it. Ms. Mary says the few women who felt uncomfortable in shorts in the 1970s wore half skirts and played. “It was just another uniform,” she says.

Back in the present, Hethersha says it helps to have friends and relatives to be part of the team to train them as they feel comfortable. “They have played football all their lives and are very skilled. They have normalised these things [like wearing shorts] for us,” says Hethersha.

Although they haven’t begun travelling yet, Mr. Britto says their parents are happy to see the women’s team from Thoothoor thrive. “Isn’t it an eventuality? With so much talent, they can’t be limited to just our district,” he says.

Mr. Britto says an important reason to begin the women’s team at Thoothoor was to encourage more women to work and be in positions of power. The first KRYC team produced several police cadets, women in government jobs, teachers and headmasters. Ms. Mary says several of her peers have held important positions and have had thriving careers. The lessons learnt from football , include taking care of physical health and sportsmanship, continue to be part of her life and have helped her tide through tough times, she says.

Hethersha, Sasha and Nidhi aspire for bright futures and are keen on continuing playing the sport. Hethersha says she wants to become a doctor who plays ball, juggling both careers. The girls aren’t exactly sure where their lives will take them. For now though, they are happy to play by the sea every other day and try football tricks whenever they can.